Lawsuit Alleges Secrecy and Abuse at Former Salem, West Virginia, Boarding School Run by Independent Adventist-Affiliated Ministry

A lawsuit filed in late January by lawyers for two former students of Miracle Meadows School, a shuttered boarding school in Salem, West Virginia, accuses the institution of covering up years of physical and sexual abuse. According to legal documents filed the previous week, the school fostered a “culture of silence and secrecy.” The school was run by Seventh-day Adventists but was not affiliated with the denomination.

The school served youths with severe behavioral problems that other schools and guardians had been unable to correct. The Washington Post reports that the school was run extremely strictly, but that the “strict discipline often crossed the line into abuse.”

The lawsuit was filed by two students identified only by their initials, L.B. and T.B. They claim that they currently suffer and will always suffer as a result of abuse at the school, which they describe as physical, emotional and sexual in nature. They allege that they were handcuffed to beds, raped and beaten. The lawsuit also describes students being handcuffed naked in quarantine, which allegedly involved leaving children alone in a 10-by-4-foot room for extended periods, with only a bucket for human waste. The complaint states that “L.B. was once handcuffed to a younger child who defecated himself.”

The complaint further alleges that school officials knew of the abusive treatment but “did absolutely nothing to prevent said abuse or neglect nor report it pursuant to their obligations to do so.” The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that the lawsuit follows a series of complaints filed against the school between 2009 and 2014, with more than a dozen filed during that period. Officials who were reportedly aware of the treatment faced a responsibility for protecting the vulnerable (Proverbs 31:8-9).

The school was forcibly closed in 2014. Its recognized educational status was revoked, and West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Services entered the school and removed its 19 students. Its former director, Susan Gayle Clark, was sentenced to six months in jail and five months of probation after she admitted to child neglect and to creating a substantial risk of injury. The judge ruled that she may not leave the state during probation because she might start a similar school elsewhere.

Clark is named in the current lawsuit, along with Tim Arrington, a former teacher who is accused of choking a boy who was handcuffed. According to the complaint, the boy lost consciousness.

Brian Kent, an attorney representing the former students, told the Washington Post that the students were “perfect victims.” He said that students sent to the school had histories of behavioral issues and that parents had selected a strict Christian school in hopes of behavioral change. Complaints from students were not seen as unusual. “They would be sent there from all over the country,” Kent said. “You can go on YouTube and look at the videos. It looks like a great transformative place for kids. … But there’s more to the story. This was a corrupt, corrupt place.”

The school was not officially run by the Adventist Church but was part of an association known as Adventist-laymen’s Services & Industries (ASI). That association, which includes small business owners and independent nonprofits, is maintained in collaboration with the denomination. Its member organizations are recognized by the Adventist Church as acceptable independent ministries, not splinter groups.

Source: Read the original report